Details.

At the depth of hopeless depression and the prospects of his deteriorating family, the last place AO thought he’d find solace was music. He had basically been “retired” from emceeing and song writing for the better part of a decade so the idea of writing raps seemed a bit unimportant at the time. However, something in the beats he was hearing brought up the words and emotions he had buried to get through each day; with each line an expression of his raw pain and hopeless love was revealed. The writing was intimate; it was inspired, and it was definitely becoming more than a spark, but rather a rebirth. AO was back.

With a handful of songs in the works, AO began showing his Doggma Uno/Glass Bottom Boat compadres, Tone Dogg Raw and Cal_S_thetics that an album was actually in the works and that his commitment to see it through to completion was real. The duo agreed to help him oversee the project and AO shared his vision for the project as a story of him emerging from the most challenging time in his life aged, scarred, yet determined and inspired.

He determined how he wanted to artwork to look and enlisted his talented friend “elope” to work on crafting a visual that helped tell the story he had crafted. What emerged was almost too perfect; a simple yet subtle image that delivered almost every emotion the album details. Additionally, AO fully utilized the Doggma Uno beat vault to create a project full of memorable moods including the unflappable EQ – Out the Ashtray of LA (who also mixed and mastered the album), as well as Apollo Brown, Duke Westlake, Calvin Valentine, and Cal_S_thetics.

Starting with the brisk EQ produced “Breathin” and ending with the powerful Calvin Valentine produced “Fly,” AO makes a statement on what it means to be a lover, a father, a poet and a story teller. Join him as he reads from his “Memoirs” and see why his counterparts felt so strongly about helping him tell his story.